Continuing on "Truth" by J.L. Austin and "Truth" by P.F. Strawson, both from 1950.

We proceed to the Strawson article, which critiques the notion of a "fact" as explaining why a sentence might be true. A "fact" is not a thing in the world! So what do we add when we change "The cat is on the mat" to "'The cat is on the mat' is true"?

Addendum: We discovered after posting this episode that Austin did give a response to Strawson via the 1954 paper "Unfair to Facts" (you can read it in this volume), in which he argues that Strawson does admit that events, and not just material things, count as part of the furniture of the world, and that facts are relevantly similar to events to also then count as being in the world, and hence something that an utterance could truly or falsely (or misleadingly or vaguely, etc.) describe.

The latter is identical in its logical structure to “It’s true that the cat is on the mat.” Just think about situations in which you might utter that. I think you’re still talking about the cat.

Adding the quotes doesn’t matter that much: He said to go away vs. He said, “go away.” That clearly does matter in intentional contexts, and even for the example just given, there’s the issue of what language or exact wording not being specified in the first instance which might make some difference, but do we want to say that “…is true” is an intentional concept?

Forgive me, Mark. I’ve listened carefully to all these recent PEL, analytical philosophy discussions on truth statements, and am still not sure what the payoff is.

Is it that, as Seth suggested, this is just some elaborately-developed science or math envy on authors’ part? That these early-to-mid 20th century, English-language philosophers were having some real anxieties/crises over the multivalence and slipperiness of language as a human technology and imperfect organism? And what of it finally, even if we were to concede the potential discoverability of such precision and clarity in truth via the syntax/grammar of language?

What happens the minute we apply this conceit to an unrelated language or language family, where there just don’t exist neatly-symmetric rules for meaning? Or where, failing all else, we have to do a lot of awkward or forced translation work to impute their mechanical equivalents? Or does this not finally matter to the argument’s stakeholders, because – by their conception – different and discrete languages (by necessity) have to be directly translatable for any real commerce or mutual understanding to be possible?

“Austin won the debate.” I could be wrong about that and then that statement, serving as a proposed connection between my mind’s representation of the world and the world as it actually is, would have the property of being false. “I think Austin won the debate.” Now, I can’t be wrong about that.

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